Abstract

Strategies-based instruction (SBI) is widely accepted and successfully implemented in North America in language and literacy programmes, but little has been reported on how this strategy would work in a bilingual/biliteracy learning context. This chapter reports on the efficacy of such an intervention conducted in two Singapore primary schools, where the government implements a unique bilingual/biliteracy policy in education, by which English is offered as the first language and one of the other three mother tongue languages (Chinese, Malay and Tamil) as a second language subject in the national curriculum. Although the Singapore quadrilingual education policy has been internationally acclaimed as being successful, some students face challenges in biliteracy learning, resulting in some students’ underachievement. To help these students catch up with their better-performing peers, we designed an intervention programme to answer the following research questions: (1) When integrated into the regular curriculum, does SBI have an impact on bilingual students’ understanding of the writing processes in their two languages? (2) Specifically, does SBI lead to writing improvement in both languages? The study had an experimental group and a control group. Such a design was intended for comparing the pedagogical efficacy of SBI on student improvement in writing in English and writing in Chinese over a period of one semester (10 weeks of teaching) in the regular school curriculum. Results suggest that the use of SBI not only raised students’ awareness of writing strategies but also improved their English and Chinese writing scores. Thus, we conclude that SBI was a useful dimension to the writing curriculum in the two schools involved in this study.

Notes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to record their gratitude to the Singapore Ministry of Education and the Office of Education Research of the National Institute of Education, Singapore, for their generous funding of the project (Project No. 25/08/OER/LZ) awarded to the Principal Investigator, Lawrence Jun Zhang. They are also obliged to the following for their assistance: the research team members, especially the two Postdoctoral Fellows working on the project at different stages of its development, Dr Wengao Gong and Dr Yajun Zeng, the two collaborating schools and the participating teachers and students who willingly took part in the study. The authors take full responsibility for any error or fault in this chapter.

Appendices

Appendix A

Questionnaire About Yourself

1 School:

2 Name:

3 Class:

4 IC Number

5 Age

6 How do you rate your interest in writing in English?

⃞ High

⃞ Fair

⃞ Low

7 How do you rate your English writing ability?

⃞ Very Good

⃞ Fair

⃞ Poor

8 Do you write in English after school? (If your answer is YES, please answer questions 9 and 10 as well.)

⃞ Yes

⃞ No

9 How much time do you spend on writing in English after school (excluding your homework)?

⃞ 1 h & above per day

⃞ 30 mins to 1 h per day

⃞ Around 30 mins per day

⃞ Below 20 mins per day

10 What do you write in English after school?

11 What is the language you use most often at home? If you use two or three languages at home, list them according to the frequency they are used, with the most frequent used language listed first (e.g. Chinese Mandarin, English, Hokkien).

Appendix B

Survey on Writing Strategies

Directions : Listed below are statements about what you may or may not do when you write inEnglish . Under each statement, there are five answers (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). The numbers mean the following:

1 = Never (meaning “I almost never do this”)

2 = Occasionally (meaning “I do this around 25% of the time”)

3 = Sometimes (meaning “I do this around 50% of the time”)

4 = Usually (meaning “I do this around 75% of the time”)

5 = Always (meaning “I almost always do this”)

After reading each statement, think about your own experience and then circle a number (1, 2, 3, 4 or 5) which best represents what you do and shade the corresponding number on the Answer Sheet.

Here is an example:

If you read a statement like the following:

I do warming-up exercises before I do sports.

1 = Never

2 = Occasionally

3 = Sometimes

4 = Usually

5 = Always

Then you think about how often you do warming up when you do sports. If you never do it, you should circle the number ⃞ and shade it on the Answer Sheet.

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